


Money makes the world go round

by DarkShadeless



Series: Long live the Emperor (whether he likes it or not) [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: :D, Crack, Gen, XD, budget meetings, have fun, i think, that should totes be a tag, unabashed crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 12:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18992572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkShadeless/pseuds/DarkShadeless
Summary: Let lose the dogs of war and leave hope at the gates. Judgement day has come.The Imperial Budget Conference is upon us.(This time it has more far reaching consequences than anyone expected.)





	Money makes the world go round

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bunnyloverXIV](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnyloverXIV/gifts).



> you know why :P
> 
> Based on the headcanon detailed here https://darkshadeless.tumblr.com/post/184976904688/another-dumb-swtor-idea-dark-council-budget (I took what you gave me and ran with it. Or my brain did. I have no regrets XD )
> 
> \---
> 
> This AU is taking on a life of its own and so I decided to pull it out of the Shorts, just in case it starts to grow as uncontrollably as the Overseer verse xD  
> Here's to hoping, I can't tell you how much fun this is.

 

 

It’s the budget meeting that does it.

They’re going to find a way to word that differently for the official news cast but that’s it. That’s the how. The _why_ they’re all trying not to consider too closely but if Yare is completely honest with himself it’s probably also bound up in there somewhere.

The Imperial Budget Conference.

The most dreaded of all gatherings in the Sith Empire.

When he clawed his way up the ladder of Sith succession from his nightmare of an involuntary stay on Korriban to the dizzying heights of a Dark Council seat, he considered many pitfalls. That… wasn’t one of them. It should have been.

Literally no one outside of the hallowed chambers of their autocratic government has any idea just how much of a _speeder wreck_ it is.

And it is. Dear Force, is it.

It’s his first. He had the good fortune of being absent last year by virtue of being in the process of murdering his successor via drawn out bloodsport, also known as the honourable tradition of Kaggath. Yare isn’t sure whether to thank all gods he has ever heard of for that period of grace or curse the same for his lack of forewarning.

In the last twenty hours he has witnessed things no one should be subjected to, up to and including the most powerful of Sith in the entire galaxy breaking out what has to be the full range of dirt they have on each other in an attempt to secure funding for their respective Sphere for another year.

For the first time since it has occurred to him to be worried about the slowly dwindling number of Councilors appointed to this august body and the implied political stability of their Empire, he sees the other side of that coin: only last year he might have had to have this debate with double the attendants.

Privately, very privately, Darth Nox suppresses a shiver.

Then he rolls up his metaphorical sleeves and wades back into the morass of their discussion. He’ll be _damned_ if he allows his Sphere to be short changed because the rest of these bantha-spawned bastards think they can sting him. (Possibly literally. His researchers will never forgive him if he has to cut their funding. Dear Force.)

“Excuse me, Darth Malora,” his purr is nothing short of malicious. If he had to practice that in front of a mirror no one has to know. It’s perfect now, anyhow. “Did you just imply the study of degrading biological matter is more important than the conservation of knowledge _already gained_?”

And how ironic is it that Yare is making this point. Sometimes he has to lock his door and have a good laugh at the fact that he is the Head of the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge. Not today but sometimes. Today he gets to watch elitist nerfherders grasp for arguments to dismiss his points and getting hung up on their own speciesism. On second thought, maybe this Budget thing isn’t all bad.

But honestly. Twenty hours? He’s hungry, he’s tired and he is one snide argument away from _strangling someone_.

“ _That,_ ” Ravage manages to put all the emphasis of ‘ _filth_ ’ in one perfectly innocent word, “is entirely moot! If there is an undesignated public position left, it will-“

Oh, gods, not again. They’ve been over this five times. Even Vowrawn looks tired of it and he is quite possibly the only one in attendance who is sadistic enough to enjoy how his colleagues are making each other suffer.

Nox has to swallow a fierce burst of envy. Logistics and their damned foothold with the, now clustered, Spheres of Military Everything. Damn Vowrawn and Marr right to the _pit_. They’ve divided the Gundark’s share of funds between them with a practiced ease that makes him seriously consider regicide.

Is it regicide if you are, technically, the same caste?

Usually he gets along with those two of his colleagues well enough (If anyone on the Dark Council can be said to ‘get along’. That’s a little like saying the carnivorous piranhas in the piranha pond like to play with each other.) but Nox has spent the last fifteen hours scrabbling to save his next fiscal year from the vultures in attendance. “Oh, shut up! I don’t see why you get a single credit, it’s not like we do any diplomacy outside of Marr’s competence anyhow!”

Oops. Brain to mouth filter? Officially broken.

Ravage gasps for breath, while at least Vowrawn all but inhales the truffle he was snacking on. Good. Yare hopes he _chokes_ on it. Those subsidized storage units had his name on them, kriff Vowrawn and his entire line to the seventieth generation.

“Why you- you- you _alien scum_ -“

Nox can _feel_ the prickle along his lekku that means they are curling into a threat display very much without his input. “Repeat that. _I dare you._ ” _Give me a reason to kill you and take your cash for my outreach program._

Like the last… he has lost count. Like _every time_ the Conference threatened to end in a bloodbath the Force comes down upon the table like a shroud made of lead and antimatter. The pull of a neutron star couldn’t hope to rival the Wrath’s aura when he wishes to, or so it feels at any rate.

Since he dragged Darth Arrid in by the ear, who hasn’t said a word outside of mumbling to himself, Yare's fellow member of the Empire’s Fury has stationed himself at the door and not moved an inch. The message was clear: _No one leaves until the budget is finalized_.

Not alive at any rate.

Until now, Yare is almost ashamed to say he hadn’t quite considered what that might mean, in the terms of everyone’s temper slowly wearing the last of their self-control thin.

The Wrath’s aura flares in acidic displeasure. Unlike the last however many times since he started slipping enough to let them feel more than threat it _keeps building_. Nox glances at the unmoving white figure. It has clenched its fists.

It is telling that none of the attending councillors seem to so much as breathe.

When the Wrath speaks into the ensuing silence, his presence pulses with barely leashed rage like a sun about to go supernova. “ ** _You will. Grow. Up. And get. Your asses in gear. Or I swear by the Force I will slaughter the whole lot of you and crown myself Emperor and either way we will have a budget._** ”

While Yare is still trying to push back against that... one cannot rightly call it a _Force suggestion_ , Darth Vowrawn, wisest and most crafty of them all, crinkles the wrapping paper of his chocolate box with a look halfway between blank shock and... Nox can’t quite place it. The faint sound is audible to the very edges of the chamber.

Not a second later he raises a hand, as if his mind _isn’t_ paralyzed, by all the little gods, how stubborn is that old snake, and intones, “First and third motion submitted, presupposed the second one isn’t.”

What he _means_ doesn’t quite penetrate until Acina’s eyes widen and she seconds that gesture with the merciless swiftness of a starving slave being put in front of a full course meal. “Supported.”

_What?_

Darth Mortis, who seemed to have given up on the entire affair after securing what had to be the bare minimum funding necessary to run their Empire’s judicial forces, raises his head from his hands for the first time in three hours. His eyes burn with unholy light. “Motion carried. All in favour?”

 

And that is how the second Emperor of the reconstituted Sith Empire begins his reign.

… he does try to kill them. That’s a failure Yare will put down to the kind of teamwork only desperation can breed. That and Darth Marr realizing that there is exactly one way he’ll get off the de-facto throne without dying and _this is it_.

Yon will be more forgiving once he has had a meal and a good night’s sleep. Hopefully.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (No he won’t.)


End file.
